On June 17, 2009, the (former) Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist located at 2555 8th Avenue West, designed by Harlan Thomas (Thomas & Grainger) in 1926, was designated a City of Seattle Landmark by unanimous vote of the Landmarks Board at their semi-monthly meeting. The landmark report was prepared and presented by Larry Johnson, AIA, principal of The Johnson Partnership, with the assistance of Queen Anne Historical Society Landmarks Preservation Committee members, Char Eggleston and Leanne Olson. Also in attendance were two granddaughters of architect Harlan Thomas (Koque Thomas Todd and Edith Williams Shuman) as well as Jay Kelly, Minister of the Seattle Church of Christ (current owners of the property). All ten board members present voted unanimously to approve the designation based on the building meeting three of the six designation criteria specified by the City of Seattle Landmarks ordinance. …Continue reading “Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist – 2555 8th Ave W”→

The Landmarks Preservation Board (LPB) designated the Bleitz Funeral Home at 316 Florentia St. a city of Seattle landmark earlier this year. During the preparation of the nomination the developers supported the nomination of the 1921 portion of the building, hoping the LPB would not stand in the way of demolishing the 1989 west side addition. They succeeded there. Now they are faced with convincing the LPB of the need to replace most of the original windows.

The Queen Anne Historical Society’s Landmark Preservation Committee toured the building inside and out on Wednesday, November 22, 2017. The interiors have been completed gutted with the building stripped out on all floors to the concrete walls. Only the wooden floors and a north south row of studs on the first and second floors remain. As is often the case in buildings whose interiors haven’t been landmarked, the views are the interior’s most interesting features. To the north, the building hovers over the Lake Washington Ship Canal and the Ship Canal Trail that ends just below it at the Fremont Bridge. The view to the north includes the passing ships on the canal and the dramatic (soon-to-be-illuminated) opening and closing of the bridge. The view across the canal to historic (and modern) Fremont is also quite nice. To the east, the vista takes in the George Washington Memorial Bridge (Aurora Bridge) and sweeps across Lake Union, Capitol Hill and the University District. Jacob J. Bleitz showed prescience in siting his funeral home. He understood the value of a great location even in the business of dying. …Continue reading “Bleitz Funeral Home: Inside and Out.”→

A sketch of the Kinnear Mansion (destroyed) serves as the logo of the Queen Anne Historical Society and appears at www.qahistory.org (upper left hand corner of this page) along with many photos of the house. The logo celebrates the longtime relationship of the society with the Bayview Retirement Community and its ties to the Kinnear family. For about 25 years, the society has benefited from a rent-free space for storing its archives at Bayview. The renovations now underway require the society to relinquish its space and seek a new one.

As the primary real estate developers of the land on the southwest slope of Queen Anne, George and Angeline Kinnear had a major impact on our neighborhood. Their 1888 house at 809 Queen Anne Ave. N. was quintessential Queen Anne style. It sported the mandatory tower, multiple gables, clapboard siding, intricately turned columns and spreading front porch that mark the style. The Kinnears designed it as an advertisement for the kinds of homes they expected to see on the lots of their subdivision. Their home sat on a two and a half acre site.

The family’s influence resonates today at Kinnear Park which they gave to the city in 1893 and which is Seattle’s second park after Denny Park. Its impact is also seen in two other tiny parks. One of them, a small strip along Queen Anne Drive just below the Bayview, retains a few trees planted by the Kinnear family and the wall which lined the edge of their property. The other small park, at Prospect and Second Ave. W., held the cistern which provided water for the Kinnear home. (The elevation drop to the house created enough force to provide water to the third floor). Also, still standing in the neighborhood are the 1908 De La Mar Apartments that George and Angeline constructed for their guests to the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.

When George Kinnear died in 1912, his son Charles moved into the home and lived there until he died in 1956. The Charles Kinnear family had strong ties to the First United Methodist Church and gave their home site to the church for the care of “older adults or children.” The Methodists created a not-for-profit to run the retirement home. It may have also started the foundation that covers housing costs if residents run out of money. The church worked with the community to build the ten-story residential community designed in 1958 that opened in 1961. While the church gave the building to the not-for-profit, it retained ownership of the land. The relationship of the building to the land is a strange historical wrinkle that had to be ironed out before Bayview could initiate its current projects.

The original Bayview building was designed by John Graham & Co. while John Graham Jr. was still practicing. Graham junior — Space Needle, Nordstrom and Macy upper stories, Northgate Mall – was one of the most successful and influential architects in Seattle’s history. The company designed many important Queen Anne buildings including the Victorian Apartments on Highland Drive. Graham created a tall building made taller still by its location above Uptown-Lower Queen Anne where Queen Anne Avenue begins its steep climb. It had three wings. The east and west wings rose to ten stories while the bisecting wing to the north was held to nine stories. If the Kinnear home expressed the essence of the Queen Anne style, the retirement home did the same for what is known as mid-century modern. Bayview sports a Roman brick veneer and on the south facing façade elegant balconies from which residents have phenomenal 180o views of downtown, the Space Needle, Mt. Rainier, the Olympics and Elliott Bay. Surely no one living on the south slope of the hill remembers the great views before Bayview went up, but now folks living on that slope and in the retirement community are ironically worried that the high-rise building proposed for Roy Street between First West and Queen Anne Ave. will block theirs.

This is not the first time the Bayview has expanded. In 1995, it gave up the front lawn shown in the 1974 photograph to a three-story building that spreads across the entire southern side of the original building and creates elegant terrace gardens facing Elliott Bay. This addition, designed by Dale Anderson of Tsang Partnership, also made room for a daycare center which meets the original terms of the Kinnear gift and provides an exceptional opportunity for intergenerational caregiving. The project now underway, designed by Rice Fergus Miller, adds dwelling units and a memory care unit in the crook of the east and north wings. It sacrifices the common lounge and balcony on every floor at the intersection of the wings. Our Archive, which connects via dumbwaiter to the kitchen and served as a place for distributing meals to third floor residents, is being incorporated into a redesigned dwelling unit. Other improvements include a new swimming pool and refurbished public spaces at the entry level.

Charles Kinnear would have been surprised that his clever scheme to keep the retirement home associated with the First United Methodist Church thwarted its redevelopment plans. Bayview has borrowed the money to renovate and add to its campus through the State of Washington Housing Finance Commission. The program lends not-for-profit agencies funds for capital projects, but they must be owned in fee simple. Fee simple means that the land and the building belong to a single owner. It took a long a time for the Methodist Church to give up its land ownership of the land, but the church eventually sold it for a dollar. Once Bayview owned the building and land in fee simple, it could borrow the required money.

Now, as it seeks a new location for its Archives, the historical society is indebted to the Bayview Retirement Community for its longtime generosity. As one might expect in today’s hot real estate market, finding even a small 200 square foot office in our neighborhood is no small feat. The society has been looking for nearly half a year and has only until the end of June to find a new spot, so any help will be appreciated. In the meantime, Bayview assures the society that it can continue holding its board meetings on the building’s tenth floor where the spectacular views are enough to cheer us up even on dark rainy days of winter.

Supporters celebrating a “HeartBomb” at Seattle Center’s Coliseum last Valentine’s Day (courtesy of the author)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Four years ago Michael Herschensohn was published on Crosscut.com asking the same question I am asking today.

A landmark designation for the Coliseum, or KeyArena as newcomers might call it, is a certainty. But as a relative Seattle newcomer myself, I beg the question, why wasn’t it landmarked before? My guess is the recession, plus a dash of politics, had something to do with it.

Let’s hypothesize for a minute, that the Coliseum is landmarked this year – now what? Seattle Center is motivated to keep the Coliseum as an entertainment venue and ideally attract a professional basketball team and unrealistically attract a professional hockey team. Seattle Center is inclined to keep their revenue stream alive and well for themselves. I understand Seattle Center’s intentions, but I view them as solely self-serving.

Are Seattle Center’s self-serving intentions justified? As a subset of the City of Seattle shouldn’t they do what is best for the city as a whole? For those that are hell-bent on attracting professional sports teams and building an arena, one that is supposedly paid for with private funds, SODO is an obvious option. Although at a recent QAHS board meeting my fellow QAHS board member Leanne Olson also reminded Seattle Center that no action is also an option. Leanne’s “no action is an option” also holds true for the City of Seattle.

Continuing to hypothesize, if an arena is built in SODO, then what should the Coliseum become? Seattle Center has responded by stating that they would investigate other entertainment attractions to stave off loss of revenue.

It turns out the greater Seattle community is currently discussing all of these questions, except that last question. Only private investors, who have everything to gain and nothing to lose, are asking for a new arena.

After asking myself these questions, I have come up with a proposal: landmark the Coliseum, consider an arena in SODO if you must, and discuss with the Queen Anne community (not just Uptown) what the future of the Coliseum should be.